End of the Term

After the weather troubles of the past day or so, Simpson got back on track with final exam week today. And it was a little bittersweet, as it was the last meeting of my first-year Liberal Arts Seminar. A great group to work with, and I took advantage of our last class to snap this photo. 

In the front are Abby Grover, Liz McKee, Robin Whitford, Brandon Herbert and Morgan Olson. In the middle are Sarah Keller, Nathan Frederick, Megan Cook and Macy Koch. And semi-circled around the back are Tim Ellwanger, Mallory Tandy, Ashley Katch, Brittney Jepson, Bruce Dahlhauser, Curt Tennison, Lexie Hagerty, Colleen Johnson, Erin Floro and Catie Ellingson. A couple of our group were gone the last day: Danielle Caswell, who was taking a Spanish final, and Manuel Gomez, who was winging his way spend the holidays with his mother in El Paso, Texas. Thanks for a great term, and we'll see you in the spring!

A (Very Rare) Snow Day!

If you're not in the Midwest, thank your lucky stars today. We're having a heck of an ice storm, and it's resulted in Simpson College calling off final examinations for the day. The driving is very difficult, the walking even tougher, and the trees are bending due to a heavy coating of ice.

This is pretty rare at Simpson: We're a residential college, and 90 percent of our students live within walking distance of their classes. We've called off classes only 3-4 times in the 18 years I've been at Simpson, and I understand that the college has called off classes so rarely in its 150 years that you could count the number of snow days on two hands. Joe Walt, the college's historian, probably could give me the exact number.

We'll be back at final exams tomorrow, pushing the schedule back a day for everyone. But the forecast is looking better, and it looks like we'll be able to get through to the end by the end of this week.

It's Final Exam Week

The semester comes to a halt this coming week with final exams at Simpson. Everyone talks about how stressful the week is for students, and it is. It can be stressful for faculty as well.

How so, you ask? After all, the students are taking the exam. You're writing them, deciding what they need to know. (Feel the power!) It's all a little more complicated than that.

The first stress is finding the time to write the exam. Many textbook publishers will give faculty exams that they can either give as is or adapt to their needs. These are called test banks. I've never been a fan of them. For one thing, my lecturing and discussion style inevitably leads us far afield of the text (not off topic, mind you — let's just say that I try to add value to the textbook presentation). The other thing is that I'm pretty sure that textbook publishers don't know the first thing about writing exams.

For me, much of this weekend's been taking up with writing and editing exams. My final exams are multiple-choice affairs, with much of the previous assessment of the course based on students' writing and critical-thinking activities in the course. And I cranked out 3 exams of 50 questions each yesterday. It took about 8 hours of my day, which was OK, given the crappy weather here in Iowa.

The second stress is editing the exam. To make for as fair an exam as possible, I start with an exam from an earlier semester and go over every question carefully (inevitably finding editing errors from the previous semester — ugh!). I never teach a course in an identical manner two semesters in a row, so that means a lot of questions from the old exam get thrown out and thus must be replaced with new questions. Those usually aren't too hard to write; I never seem to lack for material.

But then there's the detailed line-by-line editing. I teach copy editing at Simpson, so I'm a bit of a stickler for this. You're looking for the obvious typos, bad punctuation, etc., but you're also reading for clarity and the existence of (in my mind, at least) one clear answer to each item. There's nothing that bugs a faculty member more than a student claim that a question was a "trick" question — not because we want students to sit down, shut up and take the exam, but more because we feel that we've failed them in giving them a fair assessment of their knowledge. So I go over each question carefully, changing the order of questions if needed, making sure references to other questions in the exam are accurate, taking extra care to make sure there aren't two or more correct answers to an item.

How long does this all take? For each exam, it's 3-4 hours of work that goes through three or more drafts of an exam before a final copy is printed out.

In other words, anyone who says that faculty give multiple-choice exams because they're lazy and just want the semester over typically have never written one themselves.

Oh yeah, there's also 10 internship portfolios to grade this week, along with 20 papers from my Liberal Arts Seminar class. So it's going to be a busy and stressful week.

But I'll make it.

On The Road Again — This Time With Students

More than a month since I last posted — OK, I've been a bad blogger, but the excuse is that I've been deep in advising and registration and helping students at Simpson reach their goals.

I have been out of town again a couple of times: First, in late October to the annual POD faculty development conference in Pittsburgh, my first trip to the City of Steel. I'm in no hurry to go back. Never been a Steelers or Pirates fan, and the weather was cold, rainy and blustery pretty much the whole time.

More intriguing was an 18-hour (each way) road trip Nov. 16-18 to Fort Benning, Ga., with four Simpson students on one alumna to join a 25,000-strong rally against the U.S.-run Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation — better known as the School of the Americas. The Simpson crew is in the photo here: From left to right: Liz, Tom and Caitlyn Finn of Des Moines (Caitlyn graduated from Simpson this past May); Tracy Robson, the pride of Scranton, Iowa; and Courtney Lezanic of Omaha.

Lots of important folks were at the rally: Democratic presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich; Cynthia McKinney, a congresswoman from Georgia and Green Party presidential candidate; Father Roy Bourgeois, who is founder of the School of the Americas Watch and who visited Simpson a couple of years back. And there was a musical performance from the Indigo Girls, the video of which is here.

Heating Up the Energy Debate

Continuing on the Minnesota swing, I spent most of today at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter at the college's annual Nobel Conference. This year's topic is "Heating Up the Energy Debate," and this little college has brought in some of the top names of the field to talk about global warming and alternatives to carbon-based fuels.

I know virtually nothing about either topic, so it was an educational experience. But the bigger lesson is how even small colleges can do big events that draw huge crowds (6,500 this year — this at a college with about 2,000 students) and make a great statement about the school's commitment to liberal education.

I've posted some video here of the opening procession of faculty in full academic regalia. The conference continues tomorrow, after which I'll be happy to get a home-cooked meal.

Violence, Churches and the First Amendment

My field trip to Minnesota continues. I dashed up I-35 on Monday in time to see the Silha Lecturer at the University of Minnesota, this feature Robert Corn-Revere, First Amendment lawyer and author of a major treatise on mass communication law.

I don't usually learn a lot at public lectures, but Corn-Revere's was different. He spoke on "The Kids are Alright: Violent Media, Free Expression, and the Drive to Regulate," and opened with an instructive tale on Seung-Hui Cho, the student who killed 33 of his fellow Virginia Tech students last spring. As is usually the case in these shocking cases, the incident has led to calls for more regulation of violent media content.

But Cho went by the moniker of "Ax Ishmael," and some have suggested that religion might have had as much to do with the killings as violent media content. So, Corn-Revere suggested a thought experiment: What if, on the basis of religiously motivated violence, we decided to ban or simply regulate churches on the ground that we can't be sure how some unhinged individuals might twist their message?

Surely, nearly all Americans would revolt at the thought. But the freedom of speech and the freedom of religion both are protected by the First Amendment. Why are willing to sacrifice one but not the other?

On the Road Again...

I seem to be spending a lot of time on the road lately. Now I'm packing my bags for a doubleheader trip up north -- attending the Silha Lecture at the University of Minnesota on Monday night, then spending the following two days at the Nobel Conference at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minn. Never been to St. Peter, but it seems about as Lake Wobegon-ish a place as I'm likely to land.

Our current academic dean at Simpson, Steve Griffith, was a Gustavan (or is it Adolphan?) for two-plus decades before relocating to the relative tropics of Iowa. And our administration is thinking about ways to create a Nobel-like symposium at Simpson. As I'm director of the Simpson Forum, the public lectures program at the college, I'll be observing how GAC puts on its big show and see what lessons we can learn.

Thank goodness this is taking place in early October rather than January.

Figuring Out the Future

Many thanks go to Bryan Murley of the Center for Innovation in College Media and Eastern Illinois University, who visited us at Simpson this past week to take a look at our faculty, our students and our facilities. Like a lot of schools of communication, Simpson is trying to get a handle on how best to teach the next generation of journalism, public relations, advertising and new media professionals.

Bryan will be filing his report with us in the next couple of weeks, and that will be big help as we get ready to launch a national search for a new faculty member in the department.

By the way, Bryan's blog is one of the best places to go to get information on how you can keep working toward staying ahead of the curve in terms of recognizing stories and

Feeling Right at Home

So it was class dinner and movie night all wrapped up in one at the Steffen house on Sunday night. Twenty Liberal Arts Seminar students rolled in, dumped their flip flops at my front door and ate Sharon's comfort-foodapalooza. Then we all crowded into the basement for a viewing of Hotel Rwanda.

This has been a great LAS group for me this term. They seem well adjusted to their first term at Simpson, and they're also stepping up to what we're expecting of them as college students.

How to Be a Journalism Student

Professors in a variety of disciplines get a little frustrated with students from time to time. Why aren't they, as a group, more curious, more disciplined, more intellectual than they used to be some elusive golden age of yore? (By the way, profs usually think that that golden age was when they were undergrads...)

Having taught journalism for going on 20 years, I find myself sometimes asking that question. The problem, it seems to me, is that most undergraduates don't act like journalists. With some notable exceptions among the students I've worked with over the years, they don't seem to have the unteachable instincts of journalists.

So how to study journalism? British journalism blogger Paul Bradshaw offers a great set of 10 ways to study journalism. And this list seems to speak of those traits that I'd love to see in all students — not just journalism students. I especially like the following:

Get a life. Journalists generally report about a particular area - politics, sport, the environment, science, health, education, communities, religion, technology, motoring, finance. If you haven’t picked an area, pick one, and start getting involved — join organisations, attend meetings, go to events, do things and talk to people. Stories don’t come with a convenient label: you need to be able to spot them - while experiences can make for great material.

And how 'bout this one?

Don’t sit around waiting for an email reply. People can ignore emails, and they generally do. A phone call is much harder to ignore, and you’ll get more than a one-line reply. Learn to use the phone.

The Revenge of the Macs

Folks around Simpson who know me also know that I'm an obsessive Macintosh guy — have been for 20 years and probably will be buried with my fingers on my MacBook Pro keyboard. (And, by the way, could the folks at Blogger please do something to better integrate with the Safari browser? I have to cut over to Firefox to post to this blog -- major pain.)

We are a smug crew, we Mac users. Could it be that, finally, the rest of the world is coming to see the wisdom of the Mac platform? With a new Leopard operating system about to hit market and the thud of the Vista system from Windows, the Wall Street Journal reports that former Windows devotees are now realizing that Mac is the place to be for innovation.

The Journal's not alone. Sure, the Mac’s a more expensive machine, but pop music biz and tech blogger Bob Lefsetz argues that they’re worth the price in the headaches they save alone. "You can buy a Vista machine, laden with craplets, spend hours loading up the anti-virus and spyware detection software," Lefsetz notes, "or you can go Mac, and be up and running almost instantly. And, if you've got a problem, you can go to the store where you bought it and get help free."

Don't say I didn't tell you so.

Getting Advice

This past week was big for the Department of Communication Studies, as we convened our first meeting of the Communication Advisory Council. Doesn't sound like much at first to prospective and current students — but the CAC will play a big role in helping connect our program and students with industry professionals around the area and state.

We sent out about 35 invitations last spring, thinking maybe half of those invited would join the group. We were pleasantly surprised when nearly everyone accepted — and shocked when nearly everyone showed up for last Tuesday's first meeting at Simpson's West Des Moines campus.

The board is a Who's Who of media and communication professionals -- the area's newspaper, radio, television, multimedia, public relations, magazine, marketing and corporate sectors are represented. We even have a state legislator on board.

The first meeting was devoted to introducing the members of the board to our programs and to Simpson generally. We heard from President John Byrd, who told the board about Simpson's commitment to building communication studies into a centerpiece of what he calls Simpson's position as a "comprehensive college with a strong liberal arts focus."

The board's input will be crucial in the coming weeks, months and years as we look at changing our curriculum to reflect all of the major changes that are impacting communication education in specific and liberal education in general. Stay tuned: I'll be blogging about the board and our discussions in the weeks ahead.

Student Journalists, Real Journalism

Gotta prop some of our hardworking student journalists at Simpson, who aren't just doing campus journalism on our student newspaper and radio station at the college. They're out covering the 2008 presidential campaign as freelancers for C-SPAN, the nationwide cable public affairs network.

C-SPAN this summer started using an army of journalists to cover campaign rallies and presidential hopefuls mixing with ordinary folks in Iowa and other important early 2008 campaign states. So when C-SPAN producer Ben O'Connell called me in June to see if we'd be interested in taking part, my colleague Chad Roberts and I put together a team of Simpson students who jumped right in.

So far, Simpson VJs (video journalists, as C-SPAN calls us) have covered campaign events for Republicans Sam Brownback and Fred Thompson and Democrats John Edwards and Barack Obama. And you can watch some of their work online:

• Andrea Kemp, who is editing The Simpsonian student newspaper this academic year, shot this great bit of video of Brownback's campaign event at the Hotel Fort Des Moines in July.
• Nicole Cleveringa, who is the lead copy editor of The Simp this year and writing for the Des Moines Register (along with serving as student body president at Simpson), shot this event of Barack Obama's in Adel, Iowa.
• Mike Wilson made it to the Iowa State Fair to shoot this event with Fred Thompson in mid-August.
• And I, your humble blogger, got behind the camera myself to shoot this event with John Edwards in July.

We're going to be all over central Iowa until the Iowa caucuses in January, so stop back to get the latest on how Simpson student journalists are covering the world of politics.

From Colbert to Simpson

Check out this video on Comedy Central's Motherload site. It's of Andrew Keen's recent appearance on The Colbert Report, talking about his summer bestseller The Cult of the Amateur. I point it out because we've just booked Keen to be our McBride Lecturer at Simpson on Nov. 6. We're doing our best to bring some of the top speakers in the country and the world to mix with our students and community.

Happy Birthday to Me??

Well, this just about took the cake today -- literally. I walk into my 1 o'clock Liberal Arts Seminar class with 20 freshmen whom I just started working with a week ago. And the students had this banner up in the classroom. And there also were cupcakes for all.

When you get to be my age, you don't get that excited about birthday anymore -- in fact, you really wish they wouldn't come. But this is one of the things that I'm talking about when I say we have a pretty special community of learners at Simpson. Thanks guys!

Hello From McNeill Hall!

Here goes another blog -- this time on life as a faculty member at Simpson College in Indianola, Iowa.

I'm Brian Steffen, a professor of communication studies and chair of the department at Simpson. I also write another blog, Media Musings, on issues and happenings in the world of the media. As my students know, I get a bit passionate about what I teach and try to infect my students with that same passion. And, a lot of times, it happens.

We're just starting a new academic year here at Simpson, and I'll be documenting it from my spot in McNeill Hall. Stop by as often as you like, and be sure to chime in with your two cents' worth.